Death is a lovely color. Gazing across the way, the subdued green hillside of cedar and black pines are punctuated by amber clusters. These trees have succumbed to disease and though they still stand, their sap no longer flows. The needles’ green has faded leaving a bleached shell. But the color is marvelous.
Though fall offers a splash of reds as the maple leaves turn and die, and spring offers dollops of pinks and purples as the plum and cherry trees bloom, the landscape here generally oscillates between the brown of winter and green of summer. In my native New England, brown is the color of dreary seasons. It is the dull color after the flames of fall foliage have burned out and before the clean white snow falls. It is the color of mud in that infamous season after winter and before true spring. There is nothing glorious about it. But the browns of Japan have captivated my attention. The variety of hues, from the golden browns of long dead grasses to the amber browns of winter leaves to the black browns of wet cedar trunks, are lovely. They are surprisingly luminous for such an uncelebrated color.
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